1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to geodesic locator (“GL”) systems, and more specifically to those systems that employ global mapping in which the earth's surface is divided into small areas identified by a numeric designator.
2. Prior Art
Global Positioning System (“GPS”) became popular with back country hikers 15-20 years ago. In order to use these GPS systems, one had to have a hard copy map and translate latitude and longitude coordinates to their location.
Later, GL systems were installed in luxury vehicles. GL navigation systems could get a user from point “A” to point “B;” however, inputting the destination of point “B” in the form of a street address is slow and burdensome.
Most recently, cell phones were equipped with GL systems as well; however, this was a short lived craze because of the difficulty of entering a complete street address into a cell phone, such as “23456 Martin Luther King Blvd, SW, San Francisco, Calif.” The task was laborious at best. As a result, requests for cell phone navigation capabilities have virtually vanished.
There is a multitude of existing geo locator mapping systems in the public domain. However, commercial use of geodesic locator systems is severely restricted because of how difficult it is to input desired destinations. GL devices need a user friendly method of inputting virtually any location on earth. Not only will such a concept dramatically improve the mobility and efficiency of society, it can be used to improve the safety of the public as well by easily and quickly guiding emergency vehicles to a destination.
Some of the more commonly known existing systems are longitude and latitude, Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM), Military Grid Reference System (MGRS), decimal degrees, degrees and minutes and seconds, meters, feet, etc. These inconsistent systems of many different formats and units among GL systems present a barrier to general use. Further, these systems employ geographic coordinates of 20 or more characters to represent a location making it difficult at best for general use.
The Empire State Building's location might be described as:                350 Fifth Avenue,        New York, N.Y. 10118-0110or:        Latitude: 40.7484304750542        Longitude: −73.9857770519262or:(UTM) Universal Transverse Mercator Coordinates        18N Easting: 585,878.88 Northing: 4,502,849.76or:(MGRS) Military Grid Reference System:        18TWL8587802849        Section: 18        Sub Section: T        Map Section: WL        Map Point: 8587802849        
The USNG (United States National Grid) system was recently introduced that improves on prior systems. It utilizes a single numbering system consisting of 14 alpha-numeric characters. The USNG is predominately used by emergency response teams.
Natural Area Coding System (NAC) is a private domain numbering system that uses 8 to 10 alpha-numeric characters, such as 8T120 PRQ7X. Although this coordinate system is more simple than the others, it still uses alpha-numeric characters and is not cross referenced to specific geographic areas such as Countries, States and Provinces.
Employing alpha characters creates a multitude of problems that are not a factor in numeric (only) systems. Such problems include difficulty in use across different languages and especially languages that do not use characters such as are used in Latin and Anglo/Germanic based languages. Us of alphanumeric symbols also creates confusion in voice recognition of characters due to similarity in pronunciation between alpha characters, such as the difficulty in distinguishing between “B” and “D,” “P” and “T,” “F” and “S.” Also, the screen area on a cell phone is too small to have a touch screen with alpha characters. A multitude of dialects further worsens the recognition problem.
As a result of these difficulties, each country has adopted its own methodology in which to identify specific locations within their country. Thus, GL systems used in vehicles, cell phones and PDA's need to be revised for each country to accommodate their language and geodesic locating technology.
Voice recognition in GL devices only work for dictating a limited set of “commands” such as “Start”, “Stop”, “Go”, “Find” which direct the GL device to perform some corresponding functions. Voice recognition currently does not work with GL devices for inputting addresses for many reasons: voice recognition only works properly when speaking in sentence structures; voice recognition cannot discern the correct spelling of formal names; voice recognition cannot differentiate between homonyms such as “eight” or “ate;” voice recognition cannot differentiate between “Fifth” Street and “5th” St.
It is thus an objective to develop a GL system that is not language dependant. It is another objective to use characters common to a cell phone. It is a further objective to facilitate input of a desired destination into any GL device. It is still another objective to provide a GL system capable of locating all street addresses throughout the world. It is yet another objective to provide a GL system capable of locating a specific location even when no street address is assigned. It is yet still another objective to provide a GL system independent of existing Zip Codes and Area Codes. It is also an objective to provide a GL system capable of locating a person, street address or point of interest “within viewable distance,” that is, within approximately 20 meters. Although capable of doing so, the system would not be designed to identify specific waypoints as small as 1-2 sq. meters.